


Dark Water

by MercuryMapleKey



Category: Transformers: Beast Wars
Genre: Codependency, Endgame, M/M, Post-Canon, Sparkmerge, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 12:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17642801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryMapleKey/pseuds/MercuryMapleKey
Summary: Every game has to end eventually, but Rampage cannot die.





	Dark Water

**Author's Note:**

> I started this a year ago, and when I was writing it I felt like I was being drowned, and a year later I finished this and when I was writing it I felt like I was being drowned. 
> 
> I don't know. It's a weird fic. But it's also a really gay fic. So that makes it okay, right?

His spark was still pulsing. Just a wisp of a glow, hardly there in a torn and twisted frame, but Rampage had still been able to smell it upon hoisting his old friend out of the water. So familiar, yet so faint. As it had been when Rampage was first imprisoned inside his stasis pod boarding the Axalon, or again when he’d felt that old star hopper passing through the Earth’s atmosphere. A memory. A phantom sensation. More often than not, a premonition. But this time Depth Charge was very real before him.

Oh, he was in pieces. The resulting explosion he’d caused in their little tussle having torn his chassis asunder, and Rampage… Well, with his spark all in one place again Rampage hadn’t felt better since he’d come to this accursed planet. If one ignored the odd missing limb from his beast mode that was. Even an immortal frame couldn’t recover without the correct pieces. He’d left his foe at the scene of the wreckage to pick himself up in due time. And then, when Rampage realized he couldn’t feel him among the muddled energies from the organics of the planet, he’d returned.

Depth Charge hadn’t been moving. He hadn’t been online, hadn’t been in pain, he hadn’t been…

But his spark was still a flicker of light engulfed in the swell of the ocean, and Rampage knew precisely what to do with a spark. He knew how to feed them (and feed off them), he knew the limits they could stretch before they were irrevocably snuffed, and, with an inextinguishable one of his own, he knew how to kindle them.

And when rekindled, his dearest friend came back strong. Not with a struggle for life, or the strong sense of determination that so often steeped his emotions, but with an overwhelming aura of peace. He was content. He was complete again, with both of their sparks pulsing strong Rampage felt the same. Relaxed with the weight of burden removed.

That lasts until Depth Charge opens his optics and the red sensors fall on what is likely to be the very last mechanism he expects to see in the Well of AllSparks.

Rampage speaks first. “I almost thought I had lost you, old friend.”

Elation. He can smell it swelling off his own spark as Depth Charge’s tranquility drops into a sour darkness. One Rampage feels he hasn’t sampled for eons although their bout in front of the Nemesis couldn’t have happened more than a few solar cycles ago. It’s visible, Depth Charge’s distress, his despair. Rampage can see it in the way his mask twitches, the heaving of his chassis pushing through each ventilation. He can taste it. Most importantly of all, he can _feel_ it again.

To think that something as simple as the aberration of death could invoke such a reaction in him. But Rampage isn’t thinking of death, not his own, nor all the mechs he’s bestowed it upon. He’s thinking of his friend, moving once again by the power of his own circuitry.

Depth Charge is in a state of disbelief, shocked as his optics track the contours of Rampage’s faceplating slowly, then a rapid turn of his helm to view the cave system he’s found himself in. It’s dark in this little pocket of air beneath the ocean. And cold. Surely not at all what he expected to wake up to. Confusion, vulnerability, it isn’t often Rampage gets to feel these thoughts in his oldest – strongest – victim. The peripheral reminders of pain heighten as consciousness grows, tugging at the edges of Depth Charge’s mind, and when he speaks it’s with a vocaliser gruff and low.

“You should be dead.”

He’s so sure of himself in every word, so unwilling to admit to the alternative; Rampage is wearing a grin that reaches to the six horns on the sides of his helm.

“Oh, it’s not that easy, Fins,” he assures. “Your maximals took care of that a long time ago.”

It’s hardly a taunt. Hardly needs to be one in the state they’re in. Depth Charge catches it anyways with a clench of his fist – the one that’s still attached to him.

“How?” His tone is accusatory, suspicious, and unusually absent of the anger that typically strains it. He really did think he had found a way out this time hadn’t he? “No one should have been able to survive that. Not even you.”

“And yet here _you_ are with me.” It’s a seizure in Rampage’s spark to watch the light filter behind Depth Charge’s optics once more, bright in the natural din of the cavern. Alive. “Seems you may have miscalculated.”

“That wasn’t…” The scrap leftover from Depth Charge’s fins twitch and he flinches. He falls back on denial, but it’s never worked in his favour before. “You’re out of your mind. That was—“

“That was me.”

And it’s nothing but the truth. For it was him. Rampage who had pulled him from the dark waters, Rampage who’d pried open his sparkcasing, and Rampage who, with a touch more gentle than he’d ever felt against his own…

He’d kept it open, of course. Depth Charge is alive. His spark is thriving again, and Rampage wants to see every flicker.

“You should have left me there.” Depth Charge growls. He’s looking past the predacon now, towards the water that laps quietly at the mouth of their cavern. It’s not far, a few paces away at most, but Depth Charge won’t be making the trip on twisted metal and shattered struts. He’s quite helpless.

Rampage doesn’t try to supress his sigh. “Oh, old friend. You know I couldn’t do that to you any more than you could to me on Archa 9.”  

“That was different.” Depth Charge spits back immediately, attention drawn back to its primary focus. “The maximal elders wanted you in one piece.”

“But you _should_ have killed me, shouldn’t you have?” There is an understanding that they have had ever since the first time Rampage met Depth Charge’s optics without a cell wall between them – transient, but tangible. Depth Charge flinches under it, servo itching for a weapon; Rampage chuckles deeply and tarnishes the fleeting moment entirely. He cannot take his optics off of his old foe’s open spark. “If I can’t get out of this, what makes you think I’d let you?”

Depth Charge’s energy is returning to him, Rampage can tell by the familiar fury that’s begun cutting through the Maximal’s core. It dispels the haze of pain and confusion that lay before it. It does nothing for his despair. Depth Charge moves to rise, pressing his palm against the ground despite the protest it brings to his systems. Rampage reaches him first. A heavy servo against his shoulder is all it takes to press the Maximal back towards the rough floor.

“Don’t get up – you’re hurt!” It’s playful, but his spark is hungry, and Rampage can feel the warmth behind Depth Charge’s plating. He can see it right before his own monstrous optics. An electric surge throughout his circuitry, as forthright and bare as his own ventilations. He must be closer.

In a single motion Rampage pulls Depth Charge forward again, maneuvering and manhandling the manta until he’s close enough to hold his playmate’s helm in his servos and Depth Charge is grunting in pain. It’s not the first time they’ve been so close, naturally, but it may be one of the few times they’ve been so without someone screaming.

“X.” Depth Charge growls the old namesake as a warning. And then, “keep your filthy claws off me.”

Rampage won’t, or rather he can’t – servos reaching down to his rival’s helm and smoothing along the bright fins. The emotion he pulls out of Depth Charge is subtle if it exists at all. A mild annoyance, that flickers and fades as the maximal pulls his good servo up to close a fist around Rampage’s wrist.

He doesn’t say anything else. Rampage fills the air between them with his own thoughts instead, a fond return to their original scripts.

“Energon has already cleaved my spark once. What made you think it would be enough to kill me the second time?” An answer to an earlier question. Rampage hums a pleased note with the weight of his nemesis’ helm in his hands. Warm and living, words that should never have meant much to him except as a problem to be fixed. “Of course,” he amends, “the same couldn’t be said for yours.”

“I didn’t have time—“ When Depth Charge answers it’s with a tenseness behind his vocaliser, annoyed with Rampage’s barbs in his audios, Rampage’s digits against his neck, confining his world as he presently knows it. Then like a drop in the bucket, it’s gone again. He remembers. “—Megatron had the Nemesis in sight.”

Amazing. It takes the fate of the entire race to shake his perspective. Worry clouds over Depth Charge’s spark and his grip on Rampage’s arm tightens.

It’s almost fear. It could be terror. Rampage strengthens his hold in return, seeking out the gaps in blue plating and digging between them. “So you thought you could take the easy way out, did you?” He teases, “You should have known I wouldn’t let you get away that easily.”

But Depth Charge is past the point of listening. He’s in that state so often, in fact, that the familiarity behind the process is soothing. Depth Charge reaches up, grabbing Rampage by the shoulder and pulling him sharply downwards. Closer. It should be ridiculous; now more than ever there is hardly anything left of the maximal. His frame is broken and his mind has fared worse, but… as it has always been, his will derives directly from those he has failed to protect. Rampage could have felt his own spark sigh – add the residue spray of a fresh rain and they could have had that night on Rugby all over again.

“What happened up there? Where is everyone else?” The force in which Depth Charge makes his demands is only highlighted by the growing fire in his optics – that touch, that taste of helplessness that lingers on the periphery. He can’t help them now. He never was able to. Rampage leans closer still as the words bubble up to his throat.

His answer is mirthful, mocking; “since when did you care so much about them? I thought they were in your way.”

It’s been so long. But time means nothing to a monster like him, and Depth Charge is still so full of regret. Anger, frustration, and a touch of something more all pouring out of that open wound on his chest.

Of course.

He had to live long enough to lose his friends one more time.

“ _Where._ ” Desperation can override the senses in a nanoklik. Depth Charge is sparking where his systems lay exposed, and Rampage delights in his pain as pale servos move to his throat next, denting red plating in attempt to pull the answers from him. “ _Tell me._ ”

Oh, but he has to.

“They’re gone.”

It’s not untrue. There’s hardly a spark left on the planet anymore, from what Rampage has seen. But it’s not quite right either. The air above smells of death, but not despair; there aren’t enough bodies.

Depth Charge doesn’t let him go. “You’re lying.”

Empty words when neither party believes them. His ventilations are coming heavy to him again, but his optics never waver – torn between the act of holding Rampage still and pushing him away. And the pain that’s blossoming from his spark… So real. So enthralling. So honest in the face of his words.

Rampage doubles over in it. He loves it, running his servos over his prey’s face and down his chest as if he can guide the energy of his wretched spark ever closer. And it’s not the last, it will never be the last, Depth Charge is simply too good to give up to fate. How many times had he done this? How many times had he opened up to him, let Rampage feel his anger, feed on his pain, his despair, and yes, even now there was that fear. A fear of the inevitable returned. He’d never saved anyone.

Rampage must be shuddering by the end of it, his spark so full and alive and straining against its confines. An immortal beast that is never sated, but Depth Charge is right there before him. “Search high and low if you’d like, my friend,” Rampage offers, amicably. “You’ll never find any of them. There’s no one left.”

In a way, they’ve gotten old playing this game. Because Depth Charge has learned to school his outward emotions so quickly these days, a numbness to the pain that could only be learned by repeated exposure. Or maybe he never truly cared about them this time. Perhaps the Cheetor’s and Primal’s of the present were nothing but a stand in for the mechs of Colony Omicron past. Pain felt largely the same, after all. Grief only came in a singular bitter flavour that stuck to the palate long after everyone else had forgotten it. Rampage had learned that one for himself.

But Depth Charge doesn’t mourn the dead anymore. In the end, Rampage supposes there’s only so many times a mech could do it with any sincerity. If nothing else, Colony Omicron’s Peace Marshall has always been direct.

He’s beautiful. Close in a way he hasn’t been in so long, and tearing himself apart as always. It’s both a surprise and an inevitability when Depth Charge shifts to regard him anew. The stifled air between them changes and his very best victim locks onto his optics once more. So close. Enough to smell, enough to taste, enough to hear the click in Depth Charge’s vocaliser before he lets out a gruff noise that sounds almost like… a laugh.

Determination. The valour of sacrifice. The end of the game. Rampage had been expecting fury.

Depth Charge smirks hollow under his mask. His fingers flex against Rampage’s throat, and green optics gleam. “We’re still here, huh?” For the first time since his spark reignited, he’s feeling as if he has control. “Guess Megatron didn’t get what he was after.”

Neither of them would have existed at all had Megatron succeeded in his aims. It seemed like the kinder fate as far as Rampage was concerned, for the both of them perhaps. But fruitless. The Nemesis was in pieces again on the ocean floor.

“So?” Rampage asks. Curious. Doubtful.

Depth Charge lets go. His arm falls beside his helm as he leans backwards against Rampage’s plating. An unguarded show of confidence. A surprising move. “No way off this rock,” he confirms. “It’s just you and me now, X.”

It’s just the two of them. No more maximals, no more predacons, no more golden disks and time travel schemes, and no one else to kill – they were all that remained. Alive. On a planet meant to be forgotten for thousands of years to come. He was trapped here.

Rampage’s emotions don’t echo and churn the way Depth Charge’s always have. They don’t permeate the air or call out to anyone, they have no effect on the environment around them. But Depth Charge feels them. He must. He wants them. He knows he’s won. That’s why he doesn’t resist the servos that play against his helm when he asks, “How does that fit in with your plans?”

“Perfectly.”

Of course.

Depth Charge’s spark is still pulsing between them – a force Rampage could never ignore though his mind is twisted and torn. He needs to feel him; he needs to be felt.  

He’s laughing as he reaches towards his own frame, rough hands against his chestplating and then a groan as he pries himself open. Rampage’s own spark doesn’t feel the damp cool of the air it’s been exposed to around his pain, but it feels Depth Charge. He feels Depth Charge’s servo scrabble against his chest, his old friend’s ventilations on his neck, their sparkcasing cracking as it crashes together. And in the end

Bliss.


End file.
